Am I crazy?

So I was thinking this year of letting the kids get involved with the decorating.... By way of making garland. I thought it would be neat to either have them make some construction paper garland, or popcorn garland. But with them being JUST at 3 years (in January) and their brother being 17 months, is that just a disaster waiting to happen???


If you've let or are letting your LO's help decorate, what projects have you let them help with?? Obviously ornament hanging is out of the question, especially bulbs....

 

We do let the kids help decorate the tree. They started helping with this last year when they were not quite 3. :good: This year they did a much better job and we handed them ornaments to put on the tree. We made sure to hang the breakable ones. Funny thing is with all 3 kids helping there were so many ornaments at the bottom of the tree. :laughing: But they really enjoyed hanging the ornaments on the tree. :wub:

 

We don't do a ton of house decorating, so I'm not much help there. They do help a bit when we put the lights on the bushes. They have helped walk with the lights around the Christmas tree while DH or I puts them on the tree. They've almost always helped with ornaments. I don't think it's that big a deal. Sure, our tree has 80% of it's ornaments on the bottom 1/3 of the tree. Anything really sentimental or fragile I do, but otherwise they love to hang the ornaments. What about putting tinsil on the tree? Hanging candycanes? I'm not sure I'd let them have a needle/thread to do popcorn or cranberry garland, but the paper ones are cute and they'd probably enjoy that.

 

I let mine hang ornaments this year, lots of them!! I took the top of the ornament box and placed kid-safe ornaments in there. It was hard for me not to rearrange what they had put on the tree because they were all in one section, with a few on just one branch. But I figured, this is how THEY did it, so I'm keeping it!

I think garland would be a little hard at this age. What about decorations to hang up around the house? Cut out Christmas trees and have them decorate those? Or what about frosting and decorating cookies?

 

Oh, I wanted to add that mine LOVE doing those gel window clings that you can get at Target or many other stores. They are gel material cut outs that cling to the windows. They have them for all kinds of Holidays. We have snowmen and trees, stars, snowflakes, etc. all up on our windows.

 

We have always let our little ones decorate - right from when they can put the ornament on the tree - our 1st and 3rd were 16mths old at Christmas and our 2nd was 20mths.

A paper garland is perfect! Glue works great! I have other ideas too but am typing 1 handed.....

 

mine are 2 and i let them help hang ornaments... they were really good about it! i was surprised, so you may be, too! i think a paper chain garland is a great idea for this age, i was thinking of doing something like that... i also am gonna do some holiday crafts with them like fingerpainting snowmen or christmas trees, then hang those up as decoration, too. just some ideas!

 

I haven't let my girls yet, just because I'm lazy, but I did the paper garland with my son. I got the stick glue, and taught him how to glue the edges together. He also could use a baby stapler pretty could by 4, so we would sometimes just staple the rings together. I never have done the popcorn because we have a dog and no doubt it would be torn apart (and the tree) the minute I turned my back. I don't think its a disaster, you could get plain paper and let them all color and then you put the rings together, that way they still have ownership of the garland.

 

I got mine durable plastic candy canes. They can hang these from the tree. They are easy to hang, because they are hook-shaped, and don't need a hook (which is trickier and more dangerous for little kids). They are very happy with this.